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Tuesday, January 18, 2005

New cookbooks

Like so many other food bloggers, I, too, am obsessed with cookbooks. I have an entire bookcase full of them, though I haven't counted them lately. In the upperhand left corner are my favorites - all of my Nigella books, and all the ones by Jamie Oliver. Not that I don't cherish my more rare books, too, but these ones are, to me, reliable and fun.

That corner is about to get even more full. I've recently bought several new books. I keep a running wishlist, and Per decided to gift me with two lovely, lovely books from it for New Year's! He got me Real Greek Food by Theodore Kryiakou, and Kitchen Heaven by Gordon Ramsay. Ramsay's tv-show Kitchen Hell aired here last fall, and I rather enjoyed it. I don't find him especially charming, but fun in the same genre as Anthony Bourdain, or The Angry Chef. I haven't had time to read Real Greek Food properly yet, but I've paged through it and it looks wonderful. Kitchen Heaven is great too, and already full of little post-it tags for recipes I want to try.

Jill Dupleix is another nice food writer. I have Very Simple Food and have been enjoying it a lot, and I recently found the prequel Simple Food on Ebay. I got it in the mail yesterday, and yum! It's really packed with fast and easy recipes, perfect for the days when you want something better than just boiled macaroni and sausage (yes, we really do eat that. Quite often, too.) but you're hungry and it just can't take much time or effort.

My fourth new book was a real find. I have a pretty good bookstore right by my job, and they often have English cookbooks in addition to the translated ones. I'm there often, greedingly pawing their goods, and adding things constantly to my wishlist. One that I've been eyeing often is Loving and Cooking with Reckless Abandon by Kevin Gould - it's a little bit different, and it's very cute. He's inspired by Dalai Lama, and the cooking - divine. I haven't bought it, because it's been fairly expensive and not *that* great, but when I ventured into the bookshop on Sunday, they had a large table with clearance items.. behold - there was the book! I immediately snatched it up, and it's now resting happily on my coffee table, ready to be read and cherished.

5 comments:

Jill Dupleix really is wonderful. My fantastic crash hot potato recipe is from Simple Food. If you can find it, her book "Take 3" is really wonderful. It's in the same style as the Simple Food books, but the concept is each recipe only uses 3 ingredients, plus the staples you have in your fridge/pantry. Great for quick and very tasty meals. It's fabulous! It might be harder to find though, as she wrote it before she left Australia. Her website probably has some information.